Clara Zetkin

Lenin on the Womens

Question
From My Memorandum Book
Source: The Emancipation of Women: From the Writings of V.I. Lenin;
Publisher: International Publishers;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan.

Comrade Lenin frequently spoke to me about the womens question.

Social equality for women was, of course, a principle needing no
discussion for communists. It was in Lenins large study in the Kremlin
in the autumn of 1920 that we had our first long conversation on the
subject.

We must create a powerful international womens movement, on a clear theoretical

basis, Lenin began. There is no good practice without Marxist theory, that is clear. The
greatest clarity of principle is necessary for us communists in this question. There must
be a sharp distinction between ourselves and all other Parties. Unfortunately, our Second
World Congress did not deal with this question. It was brought forward, but no decision
arrived at. The matter is still in commission, which should draw up a resolution, theses,
directions. Up to the present, however, they havent got very far. You will have to help.

I was already acquainted with what Lenin said and expressed my

astonishment at the state of affairs. I was filled with enthusiasm about
the work done by Russian women in the revolution and still being done
by them in its defence and further development. And as for the position
and activities of women comrades in the Bolshevik Party, that seemed to
me a model Party. It alone formed an international communist womens
movement of useful, trained and experienced forces and a historical
example.
 Movement of Working Women

That is right, that is all very true and fine, said Lenin, with a quiet smile. In Petrograd,
here in Moscow, in other towns and industrial centres the women workers acted
splendidly during the revolution. Without them we should not have been victorious. Or
scarcely so. That is my opinion. How brave they were, how brave they still are! Think of
all the suffering and deprivations they bore. And they are carrying on because they want
freedom, want communism. Yes, our proletarian women are excellent class fighters.
They deserve admiration and love. Besides, you must remember that even the ladies of
the constitutional democracy in Petrograd proved more courageous against us than did
the junkers. That is true. We have in the Party reliable, capable and untiringly active
women comrades. We can assign them to many important posts in the Soviet and
Executive Committees, in the Peoples Commissariats and public services of every kind.
Many of them work day and night in the Party or among the masses of the proletariat,
the peasants, the Red Army. That is of very great value to us. It is also important for
women all over the world. It shows the capacity of women, the great value their work has
in society. The first proletarian dictatorship is a real pioneer in establishing social
equality for women. It is clearing away more prejudices than could volumes of feminist
literature. But even with all that we still have no international communist womens
movement, and that we must have. We must start at once to create it. Without that the
work of our International and of its Parties is not complete work, can never be complete.
But our work for the revolution must be complete. Tell me how communist work is going
on abroad.

Lenin listened attentively, his body inclined forward slightly, following,

without a trace of boredom, impatience or weariness, even incidental
matters.

Not bad, not at all bad, said Lenin. The energy, willingness and enthusiasm of women
comrades, their courage and wisdom in times of illegality or semi-legality indicate good
prospects for the development of our work. They are valuable factors in extending the
Party and increasing its strength, in winning the masses and carrying on our activities.
But what about the training and clarity of principle of these men and women comrades?
It is of fundamental importance for work among the masses. It is of great influence on
what closely concerns the masses, how they can be won, how made enthusiastic. I forget
for the moment who said: One must be enthusiastic to accomplish great things. We and
the toilers of the whole world have really great things to accomplish. So what makes your
comrades, the proletarian women of Germany, enthusiastic? What about their
proletarian class-consciousness; are their interests, their activities concentrated on
immediate political demands? What is the mainspring of their ideas?

I have heard some peculiar things on this matter from Russian and German comrades. I
must tell you. I was told that a talented woman communist in Hamburg is publishing a
paper for prostitutes and that she wants to organise them for the revolutionary fight.
Rosa acted and felt as a communist when in an article she championed the cause of the
prostitutes who were imprisoned for any transgression of police regulations in carrying
on their dreary trade. They are, unfortunately, doubly sacrificed by bourgeois society.
First, by its accursed property system, and, secondly, by its accursed moral hypocrisy.
That is obvious. Only he who is brutal or short-sighted can forget it. But still, that is not
at all the same thing as considering prostitutes how shall I put it? to be a special
revolutionary militant section, as organising them and publishing a factory paper for
them. Arent there really any other working women in Germany to organise, for whom a
paper can be issued, who must be drawn into your struggles? The other is only a diseased
excrescence. It reminds me of the literary fashion of painting every prostitute as a sweet
Madonna. The origin of that was healthy, too: social sympathy, rebellion against the
virtuous hypocrisy of the respectable bourgeois. But the healthy part became corrupted
and degenerate.

Besides, the question of prostitutes will give rise to many serious problems here. Take
them back to productive work, bring them into the social economy. That is what we must
do. But it is difficult and a complicated task to carry out in the present conditions of our
economic life and in all the prevailing circumstances. There you have one aspect of the
womens problem which, after the seizure of power by the proletariat, looms large before
us and demands a practical solution. It will give us a great deal of work here in Soviet
Russia. But to go back to your position in Germany. The Party must not in any
circumstances calmly stand by and watch such mischievous conduct on the part of its
members. It creates confusion and divides the forces. And you yourself, what have you
done against it?

Sex and Marriage

Before I could answer, Lenin continued: Your list of sins, Clara, is still
longer. I was told that questions of sex and marriage are the main
subjects dealt with in the reading and discussion evenings of women
comrades. They are the chief subject of interest, of political instruction
and education. I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard it. The first
country of proletarian dictatorship surrounded by the counter-
revolutionaries of the whole world, the situation in Germany itself
requires the greatest possible concentration of all proletarian,
revolutionary forces to defeat the ever-growing and ever-increasing
counter-revolution. But working women comrades discuss sexual
problems and the question of forms of marriage in the past, present and
future. They think it their most important duty to enlighten proletarian
women on these subjects. The most widely read brochure is, I believe,
the pamphlet of a young Viennese woman comrade on the sexual
problem. What a waste! What truth there is in it the workers have
already read in Bebel, long ago. Only not so boringly, not so heavily
written as in the pamphlet, but written strongly, bitterly, aggressively,
against bourgeois society.

The extension of Freudian hypotheses seems educated, even scientific, but it is

ignorant, bungling. Freudian theory is the modern fashion. I mistrust the sexual theories
of the articles, dissertations, pamphlets, etc., in short, of that particular kind of literature
which flourishes luxuriantly in the dirty soil of bourgeois society. I mistrust those who
are always contemplating the several questions, like the Indian saint his navel. It seems
to me that these flourishing sexual theories which are mainly hypothetical, and often
quite arbitrary hypotheses, arise from the personal need to justify personal abnormality
or hypertrophy in sexual life before bourgeois morality, and to entreat its patience. This
masked respect for bourgeois morality seems to me just as repulsive as poking about in
sexual matters. However wild and revolutionary the behaviour may be, it is still really
quite bourgeois. It is, mainly, a hobby of the intellectuals and of the sections nearest
them. There is no place for it in the Party, in the class-conscious, fighting proletariat.

I interrupted here, saying that the questions of sex and marriage, in a

bourgeois society of private property, involve many problems, conflicts
and much suffering for women of all social classes and ranks. The war
and its consequences had greatly accentuated the conflicts and
sufferings of women in sexual matters, had brought to light problems
which were formerly hidden from them. To that were added the effects
of the revolution. The old world of feeling and thought had begun to
totter. Old social ties are entangling and breaking, there are the
tendencies towards new ideological relationships between man and
woman. The interest shown in these questions is an expression of the
need for enlightenment and reorientation. It also indicates a reaction
against the falseness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Forms of
marriage and of the family, in their historical development and
dependence upon economic life, are calculated to destroy the
superstition existing in the minds of working women concerning the
eternal character of bourgeois society. A critical, historical attitude to
those problems must lead to a ruthless examination of bourgeois society,
to a disclosure of its real nature and effects, including condemnation of
its sexual morality and falseness. All roads lead to Rome. And every real
Marxist analysis of any important section of the ideological
superstructure of society, of a predominating social phenomenon, must
lead to an analysis of bourgeois society and of its property basis, must
end in the realisation, this must be destroyed.

Lenin nodded laughingly. There we have it! You are defending counsel
for your women comrades and your Party. Of course, what you say is
right. But it only excuses the mistakes made in Germany; it does not
justify them. They are, and remain, mistakes. Can you really seriously
assure me that the questions of sex and marriage were discussed from
the standpoint of a mature, living, historical materialism? Deep and
many-sided knowledge is necessary for that, the dearest Marxist
mastery of a great amount of material. Where can you get the forces for
that now? If they existed, then pamphlets like the one I mentioned
would not be used as material for study in the reading and discussion
circles. They are distributed and recommended, instead of being
criticised. And what is the result of this futile, un-Marxist dealing with
the question? That questions of sex and marriage are understood not as
part of the large social question? No, worse! The great social question
appears as an adjunct, a part, of sexual problems. The main thing
becomes a subsidiary matter. That not only endangers clarity on that
question itself, it muddles the thoughts, the class-consciousness of
proletarian women generally.

Last and not least. Even the wise Solomon said that everything has its time. I ask you: Is
now the time to amuse proletarian women with discussions on how one loves and is
loved, how one marries and is married? Of course, in the past, present and future, and
among different nations-what is proudly called historical materialism! Now all the
thoughts of women comrades, of the women of the working people, must be directed
towards the proletarian revolution. It creates the basis for a real renovation in marriage
and sexual relations. At the moment other problems are more urgent than the marriage
forms of Maoris or incest in olden times. The question of Soviets is still on the agenda for
the German proletariat. The Versailles Treaty and its effect on the life of the working
woman unemployment, falling wages, taxes, and a great deal more. In short, I
maintain that this kind of political, social education for proletarian women is false, quite,
quite false. How could you be silent about it. You must use your authority against it.
 Sexual Morality

I have not failed to criticise and remonstrate with leading women

comrades in the separate districts, I told him. By my criticism I had laid
myself open to the charge of strong survivals of social democratic
ideology and old-fashioned philistinism.

I know, I know, he said. I have also been accused by many people of philistinism in
this matter, although that is repulsive to me. There is so much hypocrisy and narrow-
mindedness in it. Well, Im bearing it calmly! The little yellow-beaked birds who have
just broken from the egg of bourgeois ideas are always frightfully clever. We shall have to
let that go. The youth movement, too, is attacked with the disease of modernity in its
attitude towards sexual questions and in being exaggeratedly concerned with them.
Lenin gave an ironic emphasis to the word modernity and grimaced as he did so. I have
been told that sexual questions are the favourite study of your youth organisations, too.
There is sup posed to be a lack of sufficient speakers on the subject. Such misconceptions
are particularly harmful, particularly dangerous in the youth movement. They can very
easily contribute towards over-excitement and exaggeration in the sexual life of some of
them, to a waste of youthful health and strength. You must fight against that, too. There
are not a few points of contact between the womens and youth movements. Our women
comrades must work together systematically with the youth. That is a continuation, an
extension and exaltation of motherliness from the individual to the social sphere. And all
the awakening social life and activity of women must be encouraged, so that they can
discard the limitations of their philistine individualist home and family psychology. But
well come to that later.

With us, too, a large part of the youth is keen on revising bourgeois conceptions and
morality concerning sexual questions. And, I must add, a large part of our best, our most
promising young people. What you said before is true. In the conditions created by the
war and the revolution the old ideological values disappeared or lost their binding force.
The new values are crystallising slowly, in struggle. In relations between man and man,
between man and woman, feelings and thoughts are becoming revolutionised. New
boundaries are being set up between the rights of the individual and the rights of the
whole, in the duties of individuals. The matter is still in a complete chaotic ferment. The
direction, the forces of development in the various contradictory tendencies are not yet
clearly defined. It is a slow and often a very painful process of decay and growth. And
particularly in the sphere of sexual relationships, of marriage and the family. The decay,
the corruption, the filth of bourgeois marriage, with its difficult divorce, its freedom for
the man, its enslavement for the woman, the repulsive hypocrisy of sexual morality and
relations fill the most active minded and best people with deep disgust.

The constraint of bourgeois marriage and the family laws of bourgeois states accentuate
these evils and conflicts. It is the force of holy property. It sanctifies venality,
degradation, filth. And the conventional hypocrisy of honest bourgeois society does the
rest. People are beginning to protest against the prevailing rottenness and falseness, and
the feelings of an individual change rapidly. The desire and urge to enjoyment easily
attain unbridled force at a time when powerful empires are tottering, old forms of rule
breaking down, when a whole social world is beginning to disappear. Sex and marriage
forms, in their bourgeois sense, are unsatisfactory. A revolution in sex and marriage is
approaching, corresponding to the proletarian revolution. It is easily comprehensible
that the very involved complex of problems brought into existence should occupy the
mind of the youth, as well as of women. They suffer particularly under present-day
sexual grievances. They are rebelling with all the impetuosity of their years. We can
understand that. Nothing could be more false than to preach monkish asceticism and the
sanctity of dirty bourgeois morality to the youth. It is particularly serious if sex becomes
the main mental concern during those years when it is physically most obvious. What
fatal effects that has!

The changed attitude of the young people to questions of sexual life is of course based
on a principle and a theory. Many of them call their attitude revolutionary and
communist. And they honestly believe that it is so. That does not impress us old people.
Although I am nothing but a gloomy ascetic, the so-called new sexual life of the youth
and sometimes of the old often seems to me to be purely bourgeois, an extension of
bourgeois brothels. That has nothing whatever in common with freedom of love as we
communists understand it. You must be aware of the famous theory that in communist
society the satisfaction of sexual desires, of love, will be as simple and unimportant as
drinking a glass of water. This glass of water theory has made our young people mad,
quite mad. It has proved fatal to many young boys and girls. Its adherents maintain that
it is Marxist. But thanks for such Marxism which directly and immediately attributes all
phenomena and changes in the ideological superstructure of society to its economic
basis! Matters arent quite as simple as that. A certain Frederick Engels pointed that out
a long time ago with regard to historical materialism.

I think this glass of water theory is completely un-Marxist, and, moreover, anti-social.
In sexual life there is not only simple nature to be considered, but also cultural
characteristics, whether they are of a high or low order. In his Origin of the
Family Engels showed how significant is the development and refinement of the general
sex urge into individual sex love. The relations of the sexes to each other are not simply
an expression of the play of forces between the economics of society and a physical need,
isolated in thought, by study, from the physiological aspect. It is rationalism, and not
Marxism, to want to trace changes in these relations directly, and dissociated from their
connections with ideology as a whole, to the economic foundations of society. Of course,
thirst must be satisfied. But will the normal person in normal circumstances lie down in
the gutter and drink out of a puddle, or out of a glass with a rim greasy from many lips?
But the social aspect is most important of all. Drinking water is, of course, an individual
affair. But in love two lives are concerned, and a third, a new life, arises, it is that which
gives it its social interest, which gives rise to a duty towards the community.

As a communist I have not the least sympathy for the glass of water theory, although it
bears the fine title satisfaction of love. In any case, this liberation of love is neither new,
nor communist. You will remember that about the middle of the last century it was
preached as the emancipation of the heart in romantic literature. In bourgeois practice
it became the emancipation of the flesh. At that time the preaching was more talented
than it is today, and as for the practice, I cannot judge. I dont mean to preach asceticism
by my criticism. Not in the least. Communism will not bring asceticism, but joy of life,
power of life, and a satisfied love life will help to do that. But in my opinion the present
widespread hypertrophy in sexual matters does not give joy and force to life, but takes it
away. In the age of revolution that is bad, very bad.

Young people, particularly, need the joy and force of life. Healthy sport, swimming,
racing, walking, bodily exercises of every kind, and many-sided intellectual interests.
Learning, studying, inquiry, as far as possible in common. That will give young people
more than eternal theories and discussions about sexual problems and the so-called
living to the full. Healthy bodies, healthy minds I Neither monk nor Don Juan, nor the
intermediate attitude of the German philistines. You know, young comrade ? A
splendid boy, and highly talented. And yet I fear that nothing good will come out of him.
He reels and staggers from one love affair to the next. That wont do for the political
struggle, for the revolution. And I wouldnt bet on the reliability, the endurance in
struggle of those women who confuse their personal romances with politics. Nor on the
men who run petticoat and get entrapped by every young woman. That does not square
with the revolution.

The revolution demands concentration, increase of forces. From the masses, from
individuals. It cannot tolerate orgiastic conditions, such as are normal for the decadent
heroes and heroines of DAnnunzio. Dissoluteness in sexual life is bourgeois, is a
phenomenon of decay. The proletariat is a rising class. It doesnt need intoxication as a
narcotic or a stimulus. Intoxication as little by sexual exaggeration as by alcohol. It must
not and shall not forget, forget the shame, the filth, the savagery of capitalism. It receives
the strongest urge to fight from a class situation, from the communist ideal. It needs
clarity, clarity and again clarity. And so I repeat, no weakening, no waste, no destruction
of forces. Self-control, self-discipline is not slavery, not even in love. But forgive me,
Clara, I have wandered far from the starting point of our conversation. Why didnt you
call me to order. My tongue has run away with me. I am deeply concerned about the
future of our youth. It is a part of the revolution. And if harmful tendencies are
appearing, creeping over from bourgeois society into the world of revolution as the
roots of many weeds spread it is better to combat them early. Such questions are part
of the women question.

Principles of Organisation

Lenin glanced at the clock. Half of the time I had set aside for you has
already gone, he said. I have been chattering. You will draw up
proposals for communist work among women. away. What sort of
proposals have you in mind?
I gave a concise account of them. Lenin nodded repeatedly in agreement
without interrupting me. When I had finished, I looked at him
questioningly.

Agreed, said he. I only want to dwell on a few main points, in which I fully share your
attitude. They seem to me to be important for our current agitation and propaganda
work, if that work is to lead to action and successful struggles.

The thesis must clearly point out that real freedom for women is possible only through
communism. The inseparable connection between the social and human position of the
woman, and private property in the means of production, must be strongly brought out.
That will draw a clear and ineradicable line of distinction between our policy and
feminism. And it will also supply the basis for regarding the woman question as a part of
the social question, of the workers problem, and so bind it firmly to the proletarian class
struggle and the revolution. The communist womens movement must itself be a mass
movement, a part of the general mass movement. Not only of the proletariat, but of all
the exploited and oppressed, all the victims of capitalism or any other mastery. In that
lies its significance for the class struggles of the proletariat and for its historical creation
communist society. We can rightly be proud of the fact that in the Party, in the
Communist International, we have the flower of revolutionary woman kind. But that is
not enough. We must win over to our side the millions of working women in the towns
and villages. Win them for our struggles and in particular for the communist
transformation of society. There can be no real mass movement without women.

Our ideological conceptions give rise to principles of organisation. No special

organisations for women. A woman communist is a member of the Party just as a man
communist, with equal rights and duties. There can be no difference of opinion on that
score. Nevertheless, we must not close our eyes to the fact that the Party must have
bodies, working groups, commissions, committees, bureaus or whatever you like, whose
particular duty it is to arouse the masses of women workers, to bring them into contact
with the Party, and to keep them under Its influence. That, of course, involves systematic
work among them. We must train those whom we arouse and win, and equip them for
the proletarian class struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party. I am
thinking not only of proletarian women, whether they work in the factory or at home.
The poor peasant women, the petty bourgeois they, too, are the prey of capitalism, and
more so than ever since the war. The unpolitical, unsocial, backward psychology of these
women, their isolated sphere of activity, the entire manner of their life these are facts.
It would be absurd to overlook them, absolutely absurd. We need appropriate bodies to
carry on work amongst them, special methods of agitation and forms of organisation.
That is not feminism, that is practical, revolutionary expediency.

I told Lenin that his words encouraged me greatly. Many comrades, and
good comrades at that, strongly combated the idea that the Party should
have special bodies for systematic work among women.
That is neither new nor proof, said Lenin. You must not be misled by that. Why have
we never had as many women as men in the Party not at any time in Soviet Russia?
Why is the number of women workers organised in trade unions so small? Facts give
food for thought. The rejection of the necessity for separate bodies for our work among
the women masses is a conception allied to those of our highly principled and most
radical friends of the Communist Labour Party. According to them there must be only
one form of organisation, workers unions. I know them. Many revolutionary but
confused minds appeal to principle whenever ideas are lacking. That is, when the mind
is closed to the sober facts, which must be considered. How do such guardians of pure
principle square their ideas with the necessities of the revolutionary policy historically
forced upon us? All that sort of talk breaks down before inexorable necessity. Unless
millions of women are with us we cannot exercise the proletarian dictatorship, cannot
construct on communist lines. We must find our way to them, we must study and try to
find that way.

Immediate Demands

That is why it is right for us to put forward demands favourable to women. That is not a
minimum, a reform programme in the sense of the Social Democrats, of the Second
International. It is not a recognition that we believe in the eternal character, or even in
the long duration of the rule of the bourgeoisie and their state. It is not an attempt to
appease women by reforms and to divert them from the path of revolutionary struggle. It
is not that nor any other reformist swindle. Our demands are practical conclusions which
we have drawn from the burning needs, the shameful humiliation of women, in
bourgeois society, defenceless and without rights. We demonstrate thereby that we
recognise these needs, and are sensible of the humiliation of the woman, the privileges of
the man. That we hate, yes, hate everything, and will abolish everything which tortures
and oppresses the woman worker, the housewife, the peasant woman, the wife of the
petty trader, yes, and in many cases the women of the possessing classes. The rights and
social regulations which we demand for women from bourgeois society show that we
understand the position and interests of women, and will have consideration for them
under the proletarian dictatorship. Not of course, as the reformists do, lulling them to
inaction and keeping them in leading strings. No, of course not; but as revolutionaries
who call upon the women to work as equals in transforming the old economy and
ideology.

I assured Lenin that I shared his views, but that they would certainly
meet with resistance. Nor could it be denied that our immediate
demands for women could be wrongly drawn up and expressed.

Nonsense! said Lenin, almost bad temperedly. That danger is present in everything
that we do and say. If we were to be deterred by fear of that from doing what is correct
and necessary, we might as well become Indian Stylites. Dont move, dont move, we can
contemplate our principles from a high pillar! Of course, we are concerned not only with
the contents of our demands, but with the manner in which we present them. I thought I
had made that clear enough. Of course we shant put forward our demands for women as
though we were mechanically counting our beads. No, according to the prevailing
circumstances, we must fight now for this, now for that. And, of course, always in
connection with the general interests of the proletariat.

Every such struggle brings us in opposition to respectable bourgeois relationships, and

to their not less respectable reformist admirers whom it compels, either to fight together
with us under our leadership which they dont want to do or to be shown up in their
true colours. That is, the struggle clearly brings out the differences between us and other
Parties, brings out our communism. It wins us the confidence of the masses of women
who feel themselves exploited, enslaved, suppressed, by the domination of the man, by
the power of the employer, by the whole of bourgeois society. Betrayed and deserted by
all, the working women will recognise that they must fight together with us.

Must I again swear to you, or let you swear, that the struggles for our demands for
women must be bound up with the object of seizing power, of establishing the
proletarian dictatorship? That is our Alpha and Omega at the present time. That is clear,
quite clear. But the women of the working people will not feel irresistibly driven into
sharing our struggles for the state power if we only and always put forward that one
demand, though it were with the trumpets of Jericho. No, no! The women must be made
conscious of the political connection between our demands and their own suffering,
needs, and wishes. They must realise what the proletarian dictatorship means for them:
complete equality with man in law and practice, in the family, in the state, in society; an
end to the power of the bourgeoisie.

Soviet Russia shows that, I interrupted.

That will be the great example in our teaching, Lenin continued. Soviet Russia puts
our demands for women in a new light. Under the proletarian dictatorship those
demands are not objects of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They
are part of the structure of communist society. That indicates to women in other
countries the decisive importance of the winning of power by the proletariat. The
difference must be sharply emphasised, so as to get the women into the revolutionary
class struggle of the proletariat. It is essential for the Communist Parties, and for their
triumph, to rally them on a clear understanding of principle and a firm organisational
basis. But dont let us deceive ourselves. Our national sections still lack a correct
understanding of this matter. They are standing idly by while there is this task of creating
a mass movement of working women under communist leadership. They dont
understand that the development and management of such a mass movement is an
important part of entire Party activity, indeed, a half of general Party work. Their
occasional recognition of the necessity and value of a powerful, clear-headed communist
womens movement is a platonic verbal recognition, not the constant care and obligation
of the Party.
 What About the Men?

Agitation and propaganda work among women, their awakening and revolutionisation,
is regarded as an incidental matter, as an affair which only concerns women comrades.
They alone are reproached because work in that direction does not proceed more quickly
and more vigorously. That is wrong, quite wrong! Real separatism and as the French say,
feminism la rebours, feminism upside down! What is at the basis of the incorrect
attitude of our national sections? In the final analysis it is nothing but an under-
estimation of woman and her work. Yes, indeed! Unfortunately it is still true to say of
many of our comrades, scratch a communist and find a philistine. 0f course, you must
scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women. Could there be a more
damning proof of this than the calm acquiescence of men who see how women grow
worn out In petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and
wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will
weakened! Of course, I am not speaking of the ladies of the bourgeoisie who shove on to
servants the responsibility for all household work, including the care of children. What I
am saying applies to the overwhelming majority of women, to the wives of workers and
to those who stand all day in a factory.

So few men even among the proletariat realise how much effort and trouble they
could save women, even quite do away with, if they were to lend a hand in womens
work. But no, that is contrary to the rights and dignity of a man. They want their peace
and comfort. The home life of the woman is a daily sacrifice to a thousand unimportant
trivialities. The old master right of the man still lives in secret. His slave takes her
revenge, also secretly. The backwardness of women, their lack of understanding for the
revolutionary ideals of the man decrease his joy and determination in fighting. They are
like little worms which, unseen, slowly but surely, rot and corrode. I know the life of the
worker, and not only from books. Our communist work among the women, our political
work, embraces a great deal of educational work among men. We must root out the old
master idea to its last and smallest root, in the Party and among the masses. That is one
of our political tasks, just as is the urgently necessary task of forming a staff of men and
women comrades, well trained in theory and practice, to carry on Party activity among
working women.

Millions Building New Life

To my question about the conditions in Soviet Russia on this point,

Lenin replied:

The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party
and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the
backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law
there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there
is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the
women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational
institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social
capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries
and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, childrens homes, educational institutes of
all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the
transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to
society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and
dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her
inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at
home. We have the most advanced protective laws for women workers in the world, and
the officials of the organised workers carry them out. We are establishing maternity
hospitals, homes for mothers and children, mothercraft clinics, organising lecture
courses on child care, exhibitions teaching mothers how to look after themselves and
their children, and similar things. We are making the most serious efforts to maintain
women who are unemployed and unprovided for.

We realise clearly that that is not very much, in comparison with the needs of the
working women, that it is far from being all that is required for their real freedom. But
still it is tremendous progress, as against conditions in tsarist-capitalist Russia. It is even
a great deal compared with conditions in countries where capitalism still has a free hand.
It is a good beginning in the right direction, and we shall develop it further. With all our
energy, you may believe that. For every day of the existence of the Soviet State proves
more clearly that we cannot go forward without the women.